FLORIDA – He rented his condo to a fugitive – and the guy won’t leave

The trouble started in April, when Sergey Umrikhin’s new tenant paid his $1,500 rent a month late — surprising, considering records showed $138,000 flowing into his bank account in December alone.

Then Umrikhin received a violation letter from the property manager at Avant Garde, the highrise Hallandale Beach condominium complex where he owns a unit. Umrikhin’s tenant was throwing cigarettes over the third-floor condo balcony and drinking out of glass bottles on the pool deck, the letter said.

Umrikhin filed eviction papers in mid-May, after two months of late payments.

Three weeks later, his rental problems still unresolved, Umrikhin searched online for his Russian tenant, Vladimir Kholodnyak, using a Russian search engine. That’s when he learned that Kholodnyak was wanted by the international police agency Interpol.

And that shedding an international fugitive is not as easy as one might think.

“International criminals are walking free on our streets and no public or government authorities care about it,” Umrikhin stated in an e-mail on June 16, when he first contacted the Miami Herald.Read more: